Investigation on the Habituation of Snails to Touch

Test tube four contained a snail and was placed in the dark. It was hypothesized that the water would remain yellow after a day.

Describe the experimental method, state its advantages and disadvantages, and distinguish between independent and dependent variables.

Describe the experimental method, state its advantages and disadvantages, and distinguish between independent and dependent variables.

Biologists Robin Seeley conducted an experiment in which she gathered periwinkle snail shells on Appledore Island and measures their thickness. The time period in which she has found the snails was before the inhabitation of the European green crab. Eighty years later, the shell thickness of the snails were measured again and recorded. This time, the inhabitation of the european green crab has increased significantly and the thickness of the snail shells has increased. She has concluded that when the crabs arrived on the island, they began to eat the thin shelled snails because their shells were easier to crack.

Cepaea nemoralis, more common known as grove snail is one of the most abundant specie of land snail. It is native from west and north to central Europe but has later been introduced to North America and New Zealand (Cain & Sheppard 1953). Grove snails are highly adaptable to a various type of habitats, they can be found in open wood, shrubs, highlands, various types of forest and even urban conditions like roadsides. They were also located at 1800 meters altitude on the Pyrenees (Schultes n.d.).

Species possibly saved as a result of population management include the Koala, Partula snails, and Sarracenia alabamensis. The koala was experiencing a population decline in Australia which prompted an initiative known as the Koala Habitat Program. The goal of this program is to increase the size of the habitat for the koala. The Queensland Government has provided $22.5 million in funding to acquire new land (Queensland Government, 2014). The Partula snail is another species very critically endangered. As this species’ population recovers in captivity, the hope is to release them into the wild. This process has to be done carefully after the African land snail was imported to a small island in the Pacific and soon got out of control. This snail was eating the crops that grow on the island. Eventually, a second species of snail, the Florida rosy wolfsnail, was brought in to prey on the Partula snail to get the population under control (Marwell Wildlife, 2014). The Sarracenia Alabamensis, also known as the Cane-brake pitcher plant, was in need of a program to stabilize its population. This plant was endangered because it was located in areas where land was cheap to acquire and when the land was developed, it reduced the number of plants. The first program

Every 30 seconds their preferred position was documented. Once the three minutes were up and all the information was documented then the ten pill bugs were gently collected and put back in to their jars. These pill bugs were then traded with another tables pill bugs. The new pill bugs came from a sucrose and water chamber habitat. Again ten of these pill bugs were gently grabbed and placed in the chamber for 3 minutes with every 30 seconds documenting where the pill bugs preferred. After the 3 minutes the pill bugs were grabbed placed back in to their jars and switched again with a different table. The last trial of pill bugs came from a tea and water habitat. The ten pill bugs were gently grabbed and placed in to the chamber for three minutes. Every 30 seconds their preferred habitat was documented. When the 3 minutes were up the pill bugs were gently grabbed and placed back in to their jar. In this experiment the control was the distilled water, the dependent variable was the number of bugs in the habitat preferred, and the independent variable was the alcohol, and the water

The barnacles were tested using a small cup filled with water which has a small rock with barnacles on it. Before the experiment was conducted, the barnacles were fed food. The change in cirri beats over one minute was determined. The average decrease of cirri beats per minute was 12.6. Although the manipulated trial was inconsistent, it is still logical to conclude that the

The results obtained support the hypothesis at the beginning of the experiment. Apart from that, the experiment is conducted according to the instructions given. This increases the validity of the experiment.

All living things respond to stimuli, including animals. In our experiment, we tested how roly-polies, or pill bugs, respond to two types of material: wet sand and wet dirt. Pill bugs are isopods, a group of 10,000 species living on land and in fresh water and ocean. They are under the phylum Arthropoda, class Crustacea, containing both crabs and shrimp. Pill bugs generally live in dark, moist environments with the decaying matter they eat.

The eggs were each individually placed in one of the beakers and were taken out and weighed every 15 minutes for 60 minutes. Weighing the eggs helped to test the process of osmosis by finding out the mass before and after soaking in water, this will dictate whether water has moved in or out of the egg.

This internet article, found in Science Daily is about an exceptionally odd animal that would go to great lengths to stay alive. In the University of Victoria, a biologist called Louise Page, studied Melibe Leonina, a unique eastern pacific ocean sea slug. Through her extensive research, Page discovers the extraordinary animals ability to survive by cutting itself. This marine snail species that has no shell is known as a nudibranch. Its various differences is viewed through their shapes, sizes, and colors but what really separates it from other creatures would be the Melibes appendages.

Somatosensation is the collective sense of touch which enables us to feel our environment through the specialized receptors in our skin. While in primates, the glabrous hairless skin of the hand palm and fingers serves as sensory organ to palpate objects and obtain tactile information, rodents use their whiskers, organized in a series of rows and columns on the whisker pad located on each side of the snout (Fig.X). Rodent whiskers acquire somatosensory information by their deflection onto objects in the environment, like the digits of the human, they obtain information regarding their shape, texture and location. Somatosensation is an active process involving sensory/motor systems, where in humans a hand will press an object of interest in order to feel its textile features, the rodent macrovibrassae (whisker) will position itself in space, scanning the environment in a series of timed protractions and retractions cycles (5-10Hz). The interruption of the whisking cycle caused by the contact of a whisker onto an object provide the necessary spatio-temporal information for the construction of a sensory percept. A whisker touch contains numerous information carried out by the amplitude of the whisker deflection, the direction, duration, accelation/decelaration on contact, frequency of the contact, force along the axial shaft and resonance frequency of the whisker.

To develop problem solving and experimental skills, for example, information is accurately processed and presented, experimental procedures are planned, designed and evaluated properly, producing valid results, recording results, and valid conclusion is drawn.

Both light touch and deep pressure are fast-adapting senses. The bulb of connective tissue is involved with adaptation. When deformation of these receptors first occurs, there is a burst of electrical activity. If the stimulus is sustained, the bulb then mechanically adjusts to it, and allows the sensory nerve to repolarize. The effect is loss of sensation. As soon as the pattern of deformation changes, the neuron immediately depolarizes again. The overall effect is to increase sensitivity to changes in the pattern of physical contact (touch) with the environment.